The Book Version Of The New York Times’s 1619 Project Doubles Down On Junk History

The New York Times has produced a forthcoming book version of its error-riddled 1619 Project, whose outrageous central claim is that slavery and racism are the true basis of the American project — that America wasn’t founded on the proposition that “all men are created equal” but on white supremacy.

Indeed, the book’s subtitle is “A New Origin Story,” which is precisely what Nikole Hannah-Jones’ lead essay for the original 1619 Project proposed: America’s founding ideals “were false when they were written,” and our true origin is not 1776 but 1619, the year African slaves first arrived in the British colonies.

As an organizing thesis, it is certainly bold and sensational, but as history it is complete garbage. That has not stopped the Times from pushing ahead with a book version of the project, as well as materials for classrooms, just as it did not stop them from doubling down on their fantastical claims when they were first exposed shortly after the 1619 Project debuted in August 2019.

Five eminent historians — Sean Wilentz, Victoria Bynum, James McPherson, James Oakes, and Gordon Wood —  wrote to the Times that December to express their “strong reservations” about the project, which they said contained “errors and distortions” about major events that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing.’ They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism.”

These errors, they went on, “suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” Most objectionable, in their view, was Hannah-Jones’s ahistorical assertion that the American colonists wanted independence from Britain “because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”